title: “Sanctions Kill: The Human Cost of DWP Punishment”
date: 2025-10-20
author: Forgotten Rights
slug: sanctions-kill
featured_image: /images/sanctions-kill-red-tape.jpg
featured_image_caption: “A pile of DWP letters tied with red tape next to an empty fridge.”
meta_description: “DWP sanctions don’t motivate work; they manufacture hunger, homelessness and harm. Here’s how the punishment regime really works — and who pays the price.”

tags: [dwp, sanctions, universal credit, disability rights, uk politics]

Sanctions Kill: The Human Cost of DWP Punishment

By Forgotten Rights

They call it “conditionality.” We call it punishment. Under Universal Credit, sanctions strip people of the money they need to eat, travel, or keep the lights on. For disabled people, it’s not a nudge — it’s a cliff.

💣 What a Sanction Actually Does

A sanction removes part or all of a person’s benefit for weeks or months. Miss a meeting because your flare-up landed you in bed? Late to the Jobcentre because buses skipped your stop? Computer crashed during an online appointment? The algorithm doesn’t care. The rent still does.

Behind every “failure to comply” is a reality: inaccessible buildings, unaffordable transport, chaotic admin, and health conditions that do not run on DWP timetables.

📉 Sanctions Don’t Create Jobs — They Create Crisis

Even government-commissioned research has struggled to prove that sanctions improve employment in the long term. What they do create is demand for food banks, unmanageable debt, and spirals of poor health. People sell belongings, skip medication, and vanish from services out of shame.

For many disabled people, sanctioning means choosing between pain relief and dinner. “Incentives,” they say. To survive what, exactly?

🧾 The Paper Trap

The system demands perfect paperwork from people already fighting their bodies. Every task becomes a test: upload this document, call this number, attend this slot. Miss one and you’re punished. Appeal and you might win months later — but hunger doesn’t wait for tribunals.

👁️ Safeguarding That Doesn’t Safeguard

Safeguarding should prevent harm, but too often it’s a checkbox. Letters are sent in bulk. Alerts aren’t followed. People with severe mental distress are told to “engage or be sanctioned.” Some don’t make it back.

🧱 What Would Real Support Look Like?

Accessible appointments by default (phone/video/home), not grudging exceptions.
Automatic “good cause” for health-related absences, backed by medical evidence later if needed.
Sanction caps and independent pre-sanction review for disabled claimants.
Investment in specialist, disability-literate employment support that isn’t run like a penalty box.

📣 What You Can Do Right Now

Record everything: dates, names, screenshots. Upload via your UC journal.
Request reasonable adjustments in writing. If refused, escalate and copy your MP.
Appeal sanctions. Many are overturned when challenged.
Connect with advice orgs and campaign groups. You’re not alone.

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“Sanctions Kill: The Human Cost of DWP Punishment”